The Devil Wears Prada 2: Still wickedly fun

The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five); rated PG-13, for sensuality

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang 

The delicious snark isn’t quite as evident, and a greater degree of sentimentality is present, but everything else about this long-awaited sequel is spot-on.

 

When a panicked Andy (Anne Hathaway) confesses that she has nothing appropriate
to wear for a weekend gathering at her boss' home in the Hamptons, Nigel (Stanley
Tucci) comes to her rescue.

No surprise, since the entire team returned: director David Frankel, screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, and stars Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci. It should be noted, however, that while the 2006 film was a reasonably faithful adaptation of Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel, this sequel is an entirely original story that is — as the screen credit reads — “based upon characters created by Weisberger.”

This actually is a good thing, since it allows McKenna to lace her character-driven plot with thoughtful — and rather unsettling — issues that are relevant here and now (although fans who enjoyed Weisberger’s two subsequent novels might be disappointed).

 

The story audaciously opens on twin crises.

 

Andy Sachs (Hathaway), having followed through with her long-ago decision to leave Runway magazine in order to become a professional reporter, receives a prestigious journalism award for a particularly hard-hitting series of articles. Alas, seconds before her name is announced as the winner, Andy and all of her key New York Vanguard colleagues — everybody sitting at the same table — are fired. By text. Victims of “corporate restructuring.”

 

Over at Runway, imperious editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly (Streep) faces a catastrophe, having failed to properly research an article about a clothing brand that has been revealed to rely on sweatshop labor. Advertisers begin to panic, and social media lights up with outrage and demeaning memes; Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman), owner of Runway’s parent company Elias-Clarke, is apoplectic.

 

Perhaps worse, Miranda cannot respond with the level of blistering waspishness that characterized her every interaction in the first film; a long series of HR complaints have left her verbally muzzled, forced to pivot to insufferable PC alternatives. One of the film’s funniest running gags involves Streep’s exasperated expression every time Miranda’s current assistant, Amari (Simone Ashley), quietly tut-tuts and forestalls an impending gaffe.

 

Seeking to hasten damage control, and made aware of Andy’s recent award, Irv figures she’d be the one to write an appropriately balanced and sincere mea culpa. He offers her a position as Runway’s features editor; astonished at this miraculous turn of events, she accepts.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: A double-barreled delight

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, somewhat generously, for violent content, macabre and bloody images, strong language and suggestive material

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.1.24

Jimmy Webb must be tickled by the fact that somebody successfully concocted a plot point to the nonsensical lyrics he wrote for “MacArthur Park.”

 

When the escalating supernatural chaos subsides for a bit, Lydia (Winona Ryder, right)
and her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) enjoy a bonding moment while looking at an
old photo album.

That’s merely one of several hilarious musical moments in director Tim Burton’s whacked-out revival of everybody’s favorite undead demon, played once again with throaty impudence by Michael Keaton.

All the familiar elements are once again in play, from the orchestral drum-beat of Danny Elfman’s title theme, to cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos’ disorienting opening montage, which eerily blurs the line between bucolic, small-town community and a tabletop miniature of same.

 

Burton and his writers — Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and Seth Grahame-Smith — have enhanced the ookiness and playful gore, while also adding a degree of danger. The first film may have been all in good (if zany) fun, but this one has a genuinely menacing undertone.

 

Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) has parlayed her earlier experiences into an enormously successful media career, as a professional ghost-chaser. Her manager, Rory (Justin Theroux), is an insufferably snooty fashion plate who fancies himself the trendiest and most sensitive guy on the planet. He’s also in love with Lydia, which — to say the least — seems an odd pairing.

 

The unexpected death of Lydia’s father (played by Jeffrey Jones, in the first film) prompts her return to the long-shuttered family home in bucolic Winter River. She’s joined by her mother, Delia (Catherine O’Hara), and  moody, rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega, immediately recognized from television’s Wednesday). The girl is all but estranged from her mother, and with good reason, having been essentially ignored while Lydia focused on her flourishing career.

 

Astrid has an additional, quite understandably reason for her sullen melancholy; her father — Lydia’s husband — long ago disappeared under mysterious circumstances. As a result, Astrid now has lost both beloved father figures.

 

On top of which, as a dedicated activist and environmentalist, the pragmatic girl doesn’t believe in ghosts. (She’s in for a surprise...)

 

Meanwhile, in Afterlife Central, way down below, the balefully malevolent Delores (Monica Bellucci) reassembles herself, after having been chopped into bits centuries earlier: easily the most grotesquely ghastly sequence Burton ever concocted. Turns out she was Beetlejuice’s lover, way back in the day, until their unhealthy relationship hit an, um, unfortunate snag.

 

Now that she’s back, and possessed of über-creepy soul-sucking powers, she’s determined to pay Beetlejuice back in kind ... and woe to those who get in her way.

 

On the Basis of Sex: Thin gruel

On the Basis of Sex (2018) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated PG-13, and much too harshly, for fleeting profanity and suggestive content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.18.19

2018 was quite the year for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, subject of both an award-winning documentary (RBG), and a dramatized depiction of the early years that led to her first significant gender discrimination victory.

Young Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Felicity Jones), eager to impress during the initial session
of her first class at Harvard Law School, quickly discovers that her almost entirely male
classmates regard her with — at best — patronizing amusement.

The latter arrived during the holiday rush: just in time for Oscar consideration. Unfortunately, director Mimi Leder’s On the Basis of Sex isn’t likely to earn any accolades, despite the significance of its subject. First-time scripter Daniel Stiepleman’s narrative is too bland, and star Felicity Jones — although an excellent physical choice for the role — rarely gets a handle on Ginsburg’s essential passion and dignity.

This film is too ordinary and “safe.” That shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that Steipleman is Ginsburg’s nephew; he clearly took a respectful, strawberry-lensed approach that stops just short of canonizing his aunt. (She deserves it, but still…) 

Steipleman also fails to balance his dual focus: both the formative years of Ginsburg’s career, and the sexist barriers that would have thwarted anyone less determined; and the warm mutual devotion shared with husband Martin, her staunchest advocate and — as a highly skilled tax lawyer and litigator himself — a key collaborator. Unfortunately, we get a far better sense of the Ginsburgs’ quieter, intimate moments — Jones and co-star Armie Hammer (as Martin) are quite sweet together — than of Ruth’s legal acumen.

By the time we hit the second-act squabbling between Ruth and rebellious teenage daughter Jane (Cailee Spaeny), the film threatens to devolve into a stereotypical, TV-style family melodrama: definitely not the proper tone for this particular story.

Which is a shame. At other moments, we get tantalizing glimpses of a much stronger and more dynamic film, particularly when feisty Kathy Bates is on screen, as renowned feminist and ACLU co-founder Dorothy Kenyon.

And to be fair, Leder and Stiepleman build to a terrific climax, as Jones’ nervous Ruth prepares to deliver her first courtroom argument in November 1972, before the three judges on the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. This episode is milked for maximum dramatic impact, and it’s one of the few times that Jones displays the appropriate level of resolve, grit and forthright sincerity.

But that’s getting way ahead of things. We begin in the fall of 1956, as Ruth becomes one of only nine women to enroll alongside roughly 500 men at Harvard Law School. Several economical scenes deftly sketch the devotion shared between Ruth and Martin, and the love that both shower on their toddler daughter Jane.

The Girl on the Train: Runaway directorial excess

The Girl on the Train (2016) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for violence, nudity, sexual content and profanity
By Derrick Bang

90 MINUTES IN:

“One more close-up,” I grumble, to Constant Companion, “and I’m gonna throw something through the screen.”

Wanting to help an increasingly confused Scott (Luke Evans), Rachel (Emily Blunt) explains
what she saw one recent morning commute, when she glanced out the train window. But
in truth Rachel isn't certain herself, and this indecision will come back to haunt her.

Truly, by now I can catalog every pore on Emily Blunt’s face. Rarely has a cinematographer been ordered to provide so many tight-tight-tight close-ups, to the serious detriment of his film.

Nor is this the only one of director Tate Taylor’s transgressions. He also relies on lengthy pregnant pauses, as if worried that we viewers are unable to keep up with the story.

Then there’s the matter of the changing first-person narratives, and the frequent flashbacks, all of which are labeled in portentous capital letters (i.e. SIX MONTHS EARLIER). This technique may have worked in Paula Hawkins’ best-selling novel — “the thriller that shocked the world,” the film poster modestly proclaims — but it’s a serious hassle on the big screen.

Employing flashbacks or alternating points of view would have been fine; doing both simultaneously was beyond Taylor’s ability. At times, it’s difficult to determine whether we’re experiencing flashbacks belonging to Rachel, Megan or Anna.

All of which is a shame, because these intrusive directorial tics and hiccups detract from star Emily Blunt’s impressive performance. Her Rachel is a tapestry of disorientation, shame, fear and uncontrolled bursts of fury. Blunt persuasively handles Rachel’s many moods and transformations, making this poor woman, by turns, despicable, vulnerable and heartbreaking.

And by this point in the film, things are beginning to make sense; Rachel’s savage mood swings no longer seem random.

Which, sadly, points to Taylor’s most serious miscalculation. His pacing is so leaden, his extended takes so prolonged, all those pregnant pauses so protracted, that he telegraphs the story’s “big reveal” by giving us too much time to deduce it.

In a nutshell, Taylor has destroyed the suspense present in Hawkins’ book. He made the story boring.